When the psychological thriller man in my basement, with Willem Dafoe and Corey Hawkins, will be released in theaters on Friday, director Nadia Latif hopes that the public will leave the interrogation that wrote history.
“I want people to think about whom stories tell them … And in fact, to investigate what they believe that their place in the world,” Latif in Reuters after the world first of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film, which is the beginnings of director of Latif and an adaptation of a novel by Walter Mosley of the same name, follows the story of a young black man whose life is on the verge of collapsing. He is about to lose his family’s house when a stranger knocks on his door with a bizarre request – to rent his basement for a heavy sum.
Dafoe, who plays the mysterious tenant, said that he was not doing much after reading the script to know that he wanted to be part of the film.
“I liked the story and I liked the way she is able to discuss certain things that concern me,” he told Reuters.
“Once (Latif and I) started to speak, I realized that I was deficient in a part of my knowledge of some of the things we are talking about in the film, and I had to be educated … and she was great to that.”
Throughout the film, the characters of Dafoe and Hawkins compete in a series of tense monologues, all located in the Dingy basement, which confront the themes of the race, the privilege and the history.
“I hope people feel troubled. I think there are very big and big things that are discussed in the film,” said Latif.
